Effect of calcination temperature on catalytic properties of Au/Fe2O3 catalysts in CO-PROX

The results showed that the gold particle size and surface adsorbed oxygen changed with the calcination temperature, being the minimum for the sample calcined at 200 °C. There was not detected cationic gold by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) in none of the samples. The presence of gold promoted notably the reduction of the iron oxide. The highest activity for CO-PROX was achieved by the non-calcined catalysts (simply dried at 110 °C), while the sample calcined at 200 °C was the least active. The catalysts activity was assigned to the gold particle size and surface adsorbed oxygen.